New York & The Nation in The Robert H. and Clarice Smith New York Gallery of American History

Collection Highlights and New York and the American Experience

Explore the story of New York and America in the Robert H. and Clarice Smith New York Gallery of American History. Highlights include:

Mounted on the building’s original 1904 columns are grand digital screens displaying a continuous, thematically co-ordinated slide show of treasures from the New-York Historical Society’s collections. The west face of the columns features individual stations, incorporating interactive touch screens and museum artifacts, presenting six themes in American history which are found interwoven with the history of New York. Projected on dramatic flat screens affixed to six structural columns, the array of objects and images functions as visual signage that demonstrates to our visitors the depth of New-York Historical's collections.

Funding for the columns provided by Bloomberg

New York Rising

The showpiece of the space occupies a forty-two-foot wall facing Central Park West, and illustrates New York’s critical contribution to the founding of the United States. Covering the period from the American Revolution through to the New-York Historical Society’s 1804 founding, a contemporary interpretation of a nineteenth-century salon-style display uses some of New-York Historical’s most treasured objects and cutting-edge technology to convey the historical narrative.

Out of the ashes of the British occupation of New York and Evacuation Day in November 1783 at the American Revolution’s end, New York emerged as the first capital of the United States. It was where George Washington was inaugurated the first president; where the Northwest Ordinance, mandating westward expansion, was debated and signed in 1787; where the essays comprising the Federalist Papers advocating the ratification of the U.S. Constitution were written (by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay); where the First Congress sat in 1789; and where the Bill of Rights was introduced. As the place where Hamilton conceived of an American financial system, New York also became the American business capital of the country. Against the philosophical and intellectual framework of the Enlightenment, the New Yorkers who participated in the country’s founding were immersed in an often-fractious atmosphere of debate, intellectual discourse, and political experimentation. In 1804, as this historical moment was passing, the New-York Historical Society was founded, motivated by an expressed need to collect items pertaining to the history of the state and of the nation, as well as the mission to capture and interpret not only the revolutionary and Federal eras, but the years to come. In so doing, New-York Historical deliberately participated in the creation of a self-consciously American culture.

Leah and Michael Weisberg Monumental Treasures Wall

A 10-foot-high display case in the Robert H. and Clarice Smith New York Gallery of American History showcases large-scale maps, architectural drawings, documents and other works on paper that previously could not be exhibited because of their size and light sensitivity.

History Under Your Feet

Under visitors’ feet, the Smith Gallery also features nine porthole-like floorcases displaying objects found by avocational archaeologists and other professionals seeking history below the ground of New York City. Objects include arrowheads, military buttons, bullets and a colossal oyster shell excavated at an extant nineteenth-century tavern.

Funding for History Under Your Feet provided by Con Edison

here is new york

New-York Historical also displays a rotating selection from the approximately 6,200 photographs comprising the powerful here is new york collection of images taken in New York on and in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. The collection echoes the Founding New Yorkers theme of resilience, renewal and transformation emerging from the ashes of catastrophic events. Accompanying the photography installation will be a large fragment of a fire truck destroyed during the 9/11 attack.

Pop Shop ceiling by Keith Haring

A ceiling mural by Keith Haring hangs above the admissions desk. The work is taken from the interior of the Pop Shop, which Haring opened in SoHo in 1986 to sell shirts, posters, and other merchandise reproducing his artwork. He painted the shop’s entire interior in black-and-white. The mural was a gift from the Keith Haring Foundation upon the store’s closing in 2005.